[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Amy: a long way from the spray-tanned, fake-nailed Wag prototypeIn these confusing days of hype and spin, what’s a music fan to do? Scarcely a week goes by without yet another young female singer being hailed as the Next Big Thing in the music business. One moment Kate Nash is the authentic voice of youth, then it’s Adele and Duffy, launched in a blizzard of publicity. All of which makes the quietly unstoppable rise of Amy Macdonald even more extraordinary, for here we have a pop-rock chanteuse whose phenomenal success has rested on that most traditional of concepts: word of mouth.Amy, 20, a prodigiously talented Scot from a solidly middle-class Glasgow suburb, has outsold Nash. Her astonishingly mature, exuberant album This Is the Life has gone double platinum with sales of 600,000 and, after a slow-burning start last August, knocked chart heavyweights Radiohead off the number one slot in January of this year. With her gutsy, pure vocals and catchy melodies, she slides effortlessly from country and western to folk and, at her best, has a haunting style reminiscent of the Cranberries or Sinéad O’Connor.She’s toured with Paul Weller in Europe, supported Elton John in concert, and Amy Winehouse’s American label is keen to sign her up. Yet while her anthemic single 'Mr Rock and Roll' has become a radio favourite, the singer-songwriter herself has insisted on staying well below the media radar – until now. For as she prepares to take on the notoriously fickle US market later this year, Amy is finally taking her rightful place in the limelight."I’m so glad that I’ve made it this far without acres of Kate Nash-style coverage and my picture plastered everywhere," says Amy, who still lives in Glasgow. "I hate getting my photograph taken; just because I’m a musician doesn’t mean I should have to sell my soul and have pictures of myself on stage with a red face and sweaty armpits plastered over Heat! every week. I’m not a model."Perhaps not, but with her ivory skin, pale blue eyes and mane of glossy dark hair, Amy has a girl-next-door prettiness that is extremely photogenic. Dressed down in Topshop jeans, All Saints boots, and a tomato-red Fred Perry jacket, she’s open and articulate, and her robustly down-to-earth attitude to everything, right down to scrutinising her bank statements, is so persuasive that I find myself making a mental note to do the same when I get home. "I’m always being told I’ve got an old head on young shoulders, which is probably due to the way my mum and dad brought me up," she says."I don’t have the songwriter’s obligatory sob story. My sister and I both had a very happy, normal childhood and we’ve turned into sensible adults. I’m well aware that lots of people call me square and say I should be out partying and getting drunk, but why shouldn’t I take noticeof my own finances and keep an eye on my mortgage payments? I think it’s important to be in control of my own destiny; to a lot of people I’m just a product, so I feel it’s up to me to takea keen interest in what’s going on around me. After all, it’s my life."

"The irony hasn't been lost on me," says Amy of her relationship with striker Steve Lovell

Gosh. I think it’s fair to say we’re both glad she’s got all that off her chest. Amy smiles with rueful self-knowledge when I enquire whether she’s got even a hint of a reckless streak. After all, when the money started rolling in her first instinct was to invest in her first property – and not a flat in Glasgow’s trendy West End, but a two-bedroom semi in the commuter suburb of Bishopbriggs, near to where her parents live.

To my relief, she reveals she’s splashed out on a £30,000 silver Audi TT, even if her gruelling touring schedule means she seldom gets time to drive it. "I’m rarely home, although I did get five daysoff over Easter, when I just drove about, turning up at my friends’ front doors to give them lifts they hadn’t asked for."

Amy also found time to see her boyfriend of three months, 27-year-old Aberdeen striker Steve Lovell, a relationship that has caused much mirth, because one of Amy’s most cutting songs, ‘Footballer’s Wife’, is a diatribe against women who date footballers. It was written, needless to say, long before she met Lovell."The irony hasn’t been lost on me," she says, grinning. "But it doesn’t change the way I feel about young women whose sole ambition is be a football Wag. My main gripe is that a lot of these girls don’t actually do anything, but just want to flaunt their lifestyle.

"I saw a survey of ten-year-olds recently and something like three quarters of them wanted to be footballers’ wives. What a sad world we live in if that’s all they aspire to. Steve and I both work hard and it’s great to have somebody who isn’t dependent on me. Neither of us craves fame.’Hard work is certainly Amy’s mantra, but there’s also been an element of luck in her trajectoryfrom self-taught 15-year-old with a guitar playing the occasional gig at a Borders coffee shop in Glasgow, to the poised young woman who already has Europe under her belt and is ready to go global. She admits that music never featured much in her early years. Her mother, Jo, is an accountant, and her father, Jimmy, a surveyor. Amy and her sister Katie, who is studying medicine at Dundee, would sing along to Michael Jackson as kids, but it wasn’t until the age of 12, when she bought the Travis album The Man Who, that she became inspired to start making music of her own. Within a year she’d taught herself the guitar and was writing her own songs."Music was something I enjoyed, a hobby. I was always really gratified when my family and friends thought my songs were good, but I wasn’t obsessed with making it big or being a star. I look at programmes like The X Factor and feel so relieved that I was never involved in something like that, because I can’t get past seeing the winners as puppets who are getting told what to do all the time. That would drive me nuts, because I need to be able to speak my mind.

Steve Lovell"I suppose, deep down, I did think it might be nice to be a musician, but I wanted to get everything else in place first, like my education, so I’ve always done my best at school and got good grades. I’d been accepted to do a degree in geography, and was having a gap year when I sent off a demo to labels and management companies I’d seen advertised in NME. I’d forgotten all about it when, months later, a London production company got in touch. Suddenly I was in a recording studio and things had really started to take off."At 17, Amy clinched a five-album deal with Vertigo, the label that the Killers and Razorlight are signed to, and a year later she was touring Europe with her band. Despite the wrench of not seeing family or friends for weeks on end, she loves life on the road. "It’s really funny, we must have the cleanest, most fragrant tour bus on the planet!" she says. "The band all moisturise and have early nights and the bass player claims that every shower he takes costs him at least £80 in fancy products. The only drawback to touring is that I eat so much junk food, plus part of my performance contract is that I get lots of Mars Bar Milk to drink in the dressing room. I’m normally a size 10 to 12 but I can feel my jeans getting tighter round the waistband, so as soon as I’m back home I head straight to the gym.""I went into Elton John’s dressing room and he bounced out of his seat and said, 'Hello beautiful,' and gave me a hug. I had to pinch myself a few times"

Vanity is not in Amy’s vocabulary. Early on she was offered the services of a stylist, which she declined. "People have a perception that the music business is full of manipulative people ordering you to shrink to a size zero and have a makeover, but that’s not the case.

"Sure, there are some artists on the same label as me who enjoy being followed around by hair and make-up people, but that’s my idea of hell. I like to get things done with as little drama as possible."Last year she toured with Paul Weller, an experience she describes as "utterly amazing", not least because every evening before going on stage himself, Weller watched Amy perform her set. He also came to see one of her gigs earlier this year and has offered her the chance to record at his private studio. "It’s been a huge privilege to get positive feedback from someone of Paul’s stature and talent," she says.

Meeting Elton John was another highlight. "I supported Elton on one date of his tour in the SECC in Glasgow, and afterwards I was told he’d like to meet me. I went to his dressing room and he bounced out of his seat, said, 'Hello beautiful,' and gave me hug. It felt as though I had known him for years, but I still had to pinch myself a few times."There seems little danger of Amy letting the attention of a few music legends go to her head, however. At least twice she brightly points out that if it all ended tomorrow she’d be content to head back to suburbia and train as a geography teacher, albeit a geography teacher with a fabulous car.But it’s clear that day is a long way off, and for now she’s focused on her music."It’s an incredible feeling playing in front of a crowd and hearing them singing my lyrics. I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling a buzz from that," she says. "I’m not up there singing about angst; I think music should be an escape from those sorts of feelings and should brighten your mood. My fans range from kids to parents and people in their 60s, which I think is fantastic."Amy is clearly having a blast and, for all her down-to-earth attitudes, she remains enthusiastically sparky about her craft and dryly humorous about herself. Frankly, as role models for today’s ten-year-olds go, she’s every mother’s dream: chocolate milk, early nights, a steady boyfriend, a solid work ethic and a mortgage on a sensible semi. It may not quite conform to every young girl’s vision of the rock’n’roll lifestyle, but it beats the flashy ways of a Wag any day.Amy’s new single, ‘Poison Prince’, will be released on Vertigo 19 May